Rachel Grimes has announced that her new album, The Clearing, featuring Locsil, will be released on May 26 via Temporary Residence Ltd. Among the guests on the record are Canadian ambient guru Loscil, former Rachel’s member Christian Frederickson, Shipping News percussionist Kyle Crabtree and more. Listen to “The Herald” track below and the trailer, also below.

WE can trust Syd Bishop at Never Nervous to keep up with what’s the latest and, for this edition, the latest is a video from Andrew Rinehart, titled “You Can’t Break My Heart (Pretty People Make Graves)” plus a curious ramble from Bishop about East End/South End – Cool/Not Cool High School battles dissoloving into L.A. glitz. Or something. It can be heard to tell, exactly, with Syd. Watch the video below and go read his commentary here.

This month’s Communion Louisville show featuresThe Soil And The Sun, Count This Penny and Louisville’s Quiet Hollers, at Zanzabar on November 12. From their Facebook page, this” “the Soil & the Sun is corn-fed, Michigan-made, Experiential Spiritual Orchestral Rock. Originating in 2008 as a two-piece band, the group has grown and matured into a seven-piece community of friends and musicians. Oboe, violin, guitars, accordion, percussion, piano, keys and vocals, cooperate to create complex harmonies, layered melodies, and driving rhythms.” Hokaaay. Count This Penny is also from Michigan and has ppeared on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion as well as sharing the stage with The Head & The Heart, Shovels & Rope and Kacey Musgraves. Think the Civil Wars. Quiet Hollers handles the alt country and indie rock this Communion show, which will be a contrast to the other acts. Tickets are $10.

There’ll be some shouting and some curious, perhaps edgy, perhaps raucous music behind it when mewithoutyou comes to Headliners on October 9 for the third time. It’s not often that a band quotes from the Sufi poet Rumi as well as other Sufi teachers, but mewithoutyou is one of those bands. Their fourth album’s title, It’s All Crazy! It’s All False! It’s All a Dream! It’s Alright, came from the teaching of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen. If these names mean nothing to you, you might have to approach this band on a musical level alone. It isn’t Christian rock, according to vocalist and lyricist Aaron Weiss. The current tour is a 10-year anniversary tour of their Catch for Us The Foxes album, which has a vinyl reissue coming up.
Also on the show is another Philadelphia band, Hop Along, and Kansas indie rock band Appleseed Cast. Altogether, this looks like a show for those with quirky tastes in music. Tickets are $15.

Deadly serious whimsy might be the best label for the collective called Of Montreal, which rolls into Headliners October 3. Supposedly named after a failed romance with a woman “of Montreal,” the band has moved from a peculiar mix of vaudeville, late-Sixties era Beatles and Kinks-style psychedelic pop to a (perhaps) equally odd mix of funk, glam, electronica and Afrobeat, with sides of folk rock and disco. They come by their eclectic tastes naturally, as the group comes from a larger collective called Elephant 6 (The Elephant 6 Recording Company), bound together by a shared admiration of Sixties pop. This also means that the bands tend to promiscuously share members, as well as exhibit a tendency to lyrical weirdness. They are on tour with Pillar Point, supporting their most recent record, Lousy With Sylvianbriar, and, presumably, their new DVD, a documentary called “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal.” The Deloreans will open. Tickets are $17 adv / $20 DoS.